


The Dress That Gave And Took

by WhiteRoseRed



Series: RedRoseWhite's Twitfic Fairytales [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, RedRoseWhite's Twitfic Fairytales, fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteRoseRed/pseuds/WhiteRoseRed
Summary: A girl trades her life to be beautiful.Fourth in a series of fairytales written on Twitter, then collected on AO3.
Series: RedRoseWhite's Twitfic Fairytales [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1888828
Kudos: 2





	The Dress That Gave And Took

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In the city with stone walls lived a girl who was never asked to dance. She baked loaves of bread in the shape of birds and flowers and baskets of fruit. She loved God and was clever & kind to animals. But she was very lonely.

One by one, her childhood playmates were married. Each wedding banquet tasted more and more like ashes and hops. Her friends and sisters were chosen and she was overlooked and abandoned like a blighted plum.

She did not want to mar anyone's happiness, so she only cried when she was taking her turn at the water pump. The sound and glimmer of the water hid her tears. One day she saw a grey cat with one ear and one eye, lapping at a puddle in the street. "Hello, little one," the cat said. "Why do you cry at the pump?" "I am alone in the world, and my heart yearns for company." "Follow me," the cat purred, and they crept down the alleys, through an arched door. The place looked like a seamstress' nook, hung with ribbons and bolts of fabric.

"See this gown?" The cat told the girl, rubbing and arching on the hem of a dress made with yellow brocade, the only finished piece in sight, "If you don it, it will make you beautiful." "How much does it cost?" The girl asked. "Hours of your life," said the cat. She put it on.

The days the girl spent in the dress were the happiest of her life. The orange-man gave her an orange for free every morning. When she tripped on a loose paving-stone, two men helped her up and looked worried for her and kissed her hands.

At the blacksmith's daughter's wedding, she was asked to dance by so many suitors that she had to change partners in the middle of every song. The silversmith's son brought her hair-combs and the stone mason's nephew gave her an amethyst brooch.

The vintner's handsome curly-haired apprentice invited her for a walk among the grape vine fields and kissed her as the moon rose. They all listened as she spoke of her favourite books and poems and her every laugh was shared and echoed; her every tear was caressed away.

She felt as though she'd been swept away to a fairyland, not living among the dull lonely world she was born to, plain as a walnut and unnoticed as a river pebble. One day as she walked home from church, her way was blocked by a black cloak on a white horse standing in the road.

"You are Death," the girl said. The cloaked figure held out a skeletal hand, and she mounted the horse behind him. As they galloped into the eternal mists, the lacing on the dress came unbound of its own accord and it fell from the girl's body.

It blew like a leaf over the church, above the vineyard, over the orange-man's stall, sailed like a banner over the day's wedding-feast, and landed in the puddle next to the water-pump, where it was sodden and run over by the carts and ponies until it was only rags.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to imagine that they are the stories that the original character Cerryn from my Star Wars fic, [Sweetness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23748004/chapters/57035197), would have in the books in her room.


End file.
